Investigation of clustered actuation in tensegrity structures

As tensegrity research is moving away from static structures toward active structures it is becoming critical that new actuation strategies and comprehensive active structures theories are developed to fully exploit the properties of tensegrity structures. In this paper a new general tensegrity paradigm is presented that incorporates a concept referred to as clustered actuation. Clustered actuation exploits the existence of cable elements in a tensegrity structure by allowing cables to be run over frictionless pulleys or through frictionless loops at the nodes. This actuation strategy is a scalable solution that can be utilized for active structures that incorporate many active elements and can reduce the number of actuators necessary for complex shape changes. Clustered actuation also has secondary benefits, specifically reducing the force requirements of actuators in dynamic structures, reducing the number of pre-stress modes to potentially one global mode and relieving element size limitations that occur with embedded actuation. Newly formulated clustered equilibrium equations are developed using energy methods and are shown to be a generalization of the classic tensegrity governing equations. Pre-stress analysis, mechanism analysis and stability of clustered structures are discussed. Lastly, examples compare the mechanics of a clustered structure to an equivalent classic structure and the utility of clustering is highlighted by allowing for actuation throughout a class 1 (no bar-to-bar connections) tensegrity while not embedding the actuators into the structure. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.